Range Rover Range_e
by David Finlay (21 June 2011)
Land Rover products have become spectacularly quieter over the past ten years, but this is ridiculous. I'm pulling away from rest in a Range Rover Sport and it's not making any noticeable noise at all. I know there's a three-litre V6 turbo diesel engine under the bonnet, but I can't hear it.
That's because it isn't switched on. And that, in turn, is because this is no ordinary Range Rover Sport. It's actually one of just five prototypes based on the Sport but known as Range_e. You can't buy a Range_e - and in fact you won't be able to buy anything quite like it for some time - but it's part of Land Rover's drive towards increasing the fuel economy and lowering the CO2 emissions of its vehicles to levels that would once have been beyond imagining.
The CO2 figure in particular is astonishing, at just 89g/km, and it's possible because the Range_e is a plug-in hybrid. Sometimes it uses its diesel engine, sometimes an electric motor, sometimes both, and although it has an electric-only range of just 20 miles, the fact that you can recharge the battery by plugging it into the mains overnight means that an urban dweller might go for days without using any diesel whatever.
The combination of engine and motor means gives a top speed of 120mph, and between the eight-speed automatic transmission and the road wheels there's a perfectly normal Land Rover four-wheel drive system. For that reason, there's no reason to suppose that the Range_e will be anything less than excellent off-road, though I'm not investigating that. I'm more concerned about how the Range_e works as a luxury car.
Well, since it's so quiet in gentle running, it works very well indeed. Admittedly, it could be better. When the diesel engine starts to contribute, it does so in a manner that could fairly be described as clunky.
That's not really the point, though. In fact, the Land Rover engineers have deliberately suspended work on making the transition smoother, though I would guess that it pained them to do so. It can be improved in due course. For the moment, the idea of the project - whose members include the Coventry and Birmingham Low Emissions Demonstrators (CABLED) consortium, and which is supported by the UK Government's Technology Strategy Board - is to bring a plug-in hybrid diesel 4x4 to production readiness.
After my brief drive in the Range_e, I'd say that this can't be far off, but the technology won't be coming to market in the near future. Although Land Rover will put a hybrid on sale in 2013, it won't be a plug-in, so its battery will have to be recharged by the engine and through brake energy regeneration. A full-scale plug-in hybrid will follow an undisclosed number of years later.
There is no official word yet on which models will get this treatment, but it's reasonable to assume that they will be the larger ones. There are various reasons for this: since a Range Rover (let's say) is already heavy and expensive, the extra weight and cost of a hybrid system - and to an even greater extent a plug-in hybrid one - won't have a huge effect. This effect would be more pronounced on the Sport or its close rival, the Discovery, and would extend beyond the bounds of reason in the new Evoque.
That's the current situation, at least. It may be possible to reduce the weight, though this depends largely on advances in battery technology, and right now there's no sign of a revolutionary breakthrough there. Price reduction depends of economy of scale, and there isn't a lot of scale just yet.
Still, the idea of even a "conventional" hybrid with Land Rover-style off-road capability appearing within the next two years is quite appealing. And even in prototype form the Range_e suggests that far more exciting developments lie ahead.
